The World Series That Wasn’t – Post-Season Musings Of A Veteran Baseball Scribe

In an explosion of simcha, while we were engaged in hakafos, fans downtown were celebrating a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning that sent our hometown Tigers to the World Series.

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In an informal shul poll, conducted while the St. Louis Cardinals were battling the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series, every respondent wanted the Tigers to play the Mets, not the Cardinals, in the World Series. Detroiters, it seems, wanted the Tigers to beat both New York teams. (The Tigers, you may recall, had trounced the New York Yankees in the playoffs before rolling over the Oakland A’s in the ALCS for the right to represent the American League in the World Series.)

Tigers manager Jim Leyland wouldn’t say so publicly, but he was rooting for the Cardinals against the Mets. Before being lured back to managing by the Tigers after the 2005 season, Leyland worked for Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa – his best baseball buddy – the past couple of years as a scout reporting on National League teams.

Me? I wanted the Mets because I feel a slight attachment to their manager, Willie Randolph.

It was December 1975 and I was the boss of a national baseball monthly publication. I’d assigned myself to cover the baseball winter meetings in Orlando, Florida.

Peter Gammons, then of the Boston Globe and now of ESPN, wrote a column for my publication and had followed Randolph’s minor league career in the Pittsburgh Pirates chain. Rumors abounded in the pressroom of a pending trade between the Pirates and the Yankees. Gammons clued me in as to Randolph’s abilities, even though at that point he’d appeared in only 30 big league games, hitting a paltry .164 in 60 at-bats.

I went up to my hotel room to daven Mincha and returned to the pressroom just as the announcement of the trade was being made. Pittsburgh writers said Randolph was a good kid from a hard-working Brooklyn family.

I saw Randolph often over the following years as he played and coached with the Yankees, though we didn’t exchange more than a couple of words. I was happy for him when he became manager of the Mets two years ago.

Frankly, while Randolph is a great guy and a wonderful family man, he’s not yet an elite manager and was outmanaged in the NLCS by Tony LaRussa. As mentioned above, I’d been rooting for Randolph and the Mets to take on the Tigers in the World Series, and while I’m a lifelong Detroit area resident, I would have wanted the Mets to win the World Series against the Tigers in seven games.

Here’s why:

The Mets have Jewish owners and I figured – hoped – that some good Jewish charity would benefit from the Mets’ success. The Tigers’ owner is Mike Ilitch, who also owns, among other holdings, a national pizza chain and the Detroit Red Wings hockey club. He’s a non-Jew and, in my opinion, a non-mensch. I say that because I was working in the Tigers’ front office when he bought the team in 1991. Many long-time employees were fired, including a secretary who’d served the Tigers loyally for five decades under three different ownerships. The philosophy seemed to be, Why keep long-time employees who get maximum vacation time and make more money than those just starting out?

I’ll never forget what the head of the business department told me: “I think they’re keeping me just to pick my brain, and when they think they have the information they need to operate with someone who makes less money, I’ll be gone.” Four months later, late on a Friday afternoon, he and his secretary were escorted out without warning by a guard.

I will say this for Ilitch: He’s great for the fans. He spends money on his players and on player development and he’s not afraid of signing high-priced free agents in his efforts to build a winning team.

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner also has a history of firing employees. But despite his legendarily gruff exterior, Steinbrenner is actually a caring and compassionate man. Even when he fires someone for one reason or another, he invariably finds a way to extend some form of support – paying an individual’s rent, for example, or taking care of college tuition for a former employee’s child.

Author, columnist, and public speaker Irwin Cohen headed a national baseball publication for five years and worked for a major league team, becoming the first Orthodox Jew to earn a World Series ring. His column appears the second week of each month. He can be reached in his suburban Detroit area dugout at irdav@sbcglobal.net.